PETA Co-Founder Explores Latest Discoveries About Animals In New Book
Speaker 1: 00:00 During its 40 year history, the people for the ethical treatment of animals or PETA has been in the headlines a lot. It's controversial as featuring naked women and animal carcasses and protests against for have brought animal activism into the mainstream. For instance, among its other efforts, pita has for years agitated against sea world's Marine animal shows, but now Peter president and founder Ingrid Newkirk is out with a book that attempts to explain why it's so important to treat animals with respect. It explores the richness of animals, lives and presents reasons why they have their own right to exist. Joining me is Ingrid Newkirk, co author with gene stone of the new book, animal kind, remarkable discoveries about animals and revolutionary new ways to show them compassion and Ingrid, welcome to the program. Speaker 2: 00:53 Thank you very much. Speaker 1: 00:55 Now since I mentioned it, have the changes. SeaWorld San Diego has made to stop its Orca breeding and its shambhu shows, made the park more palatable to PETA. Speaker 2: 01:04 No, it's made the park better than it was and we just managed to precious. See well to stop having trainers actually ride on the dolphins faces on their nostrums as if they were surfing on dolphins. So that's yet one other thing that is being set aside that they should never have done in the first place. But no, as long as there are these wonderful ocean going mammals with all their interests in being out in the free seas, stuck in a cement cell, just wearing their teeth down to the knobs by chewing on those underwater bars and not able to use this sonar because it bounces straight off the walls and having no real life. No. Uh, we are not satisfied. They need to go to all other kinds of amusements. They've already gone to concerts. They can have concerts all the time for all we care. But get those Marine mammals out, retire them to a seaside sanctuary. Speaker 1: 02:06 Just one word about that though. Sue world does a lot of work to save all sorts of Marine life. How does pita balance rescue work like that with condemning the, the keeping of animals captive? Speaker 2: 02:18 To me it's like hunters for the hungry. You know it's two different things is people like to go out and shoot animals and then they want to justify what they're doing by doing something like feed the homeless and you think, wait a second, you can feed the homeless or the hungry without going out and shooting a deer and his family who standing in the woods. So see, we'll can do the ocean rescues they want. That's ground. Go ahead, but don't use that as an excuse to incarcerate these other highly intelligent social animals and keep them crammed into these pans. In fact, even in bed social groupings, it's elementary where one of them will scar up the other one because they fight all the time. They have no way to escape. Speaker 1: 03:06 Now your new book animal kind describes discoveries about animals that uncover their complicated in our lives. Can you tell us about that? Speaker 2: 03:16 It's absolutely fascinating. I collect information about every kind of animal from the smallest to the largest for them, the most familiar to the most exotic. Yet I found out so many different interesting things. If you just take dogs, I think many people know that the average dog in your home knows about 300 human words with a hotel ever being taught one. And we know no words of dog and then those as a so sensitive they can actually now, um, tell if a person is going to, is about to go into seizure. I have an epileptic fit. Or if they have a cancerous tumor, they can detect those subtle changes in the chemistry of the body. They can also detect a thumb drive in a metal box in a metal steel cabinet. And so you must never eat in front of you have a dog. It drives them insane and you must never pull them along when you're walking them because they, the Bush is their internet. They know who went by what kind of health they were in and when it happened and so on. So it's their walk. Let them have it. Speaker 1: 04:29 There are so many people now, especially here in California who are not eating the animals, who are not using animal products and the reasons for that STEM from ethical to dietary concerns to climate change. Do you know if that's made an impact on the kinds of things that you watch out for on animal factory farms and related industries? Speaker 2: 04:49 Yes, absolutely. It's absolutely wonderful. If someone chooses one vegan meal of a one meat or dairy meal or stops eating eggs, it makes a huge difference because the whole marketplace is shifting. You can go to a false food restaurant, you can go to any grocery store now. You don't have to go to anywhere special and you'll find the beyond burger. You will find soy, almond milk, you name it, macadamia milk. It's all there for the taking and it doesn't have to be costly, but it's better for you as you say, for the environment and it's certainly a hundred percent cruelty free. And when we go onto the factory farms or even the transport trucks in all weather and certainly the slaughter house, it's not anything that a kind person would wish to spend their money on. Speaker 1: 05:42 I've been speaking with the founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, co author with gene stone of the new book, animal kind, remarkable discoveries about animals and revolutionary new ways to show them compassion. Ingrid Newkirk, thank you so much. Speaker 2: 05:56 Thank you so much.
